From science fiction to science fact

Do you prefer going out and enjoying a brand-new movie on the big screen, or have you rather invested heavily in a home-entertainment system? The advent of cable, satellite and fiber, in combination with the smart devices (and a host of useful apps and games that come with them) that connect seamlessly with these, mean many folk around the world can now enjoy a heightened movie experience at home – without the need to fork out around US$10 per person for a ticket, excluding parking, popcorn/candy, and drinks. On the other hand, some individuals would still argue that watching the visual storytelling of a new release in 3 or 4D, as it unfolds on a three-storey screen, tops the week’s activities.

Whichever option you favor, it is hard to argue against the fact that what happens on our movie screens is often the impetus for technological developments in real life.

Cool devices hold us captive

Flip-open communication devices? Talking to your wrist like a Starfleet captain? Yes, the Star Trek series seemed to lay the groundwork for the investments later made by Apple, Samsung, Pixel and the like. It can be seen in their smart watches; and those flip-open cell phones, which seemed so cool in Star Trek and then came into vogue in real life in the early 2000s (nostalgic yet about your old Sony Ericsson “brick”?), just a few decades after Captain Kirk first flipped his open. Nice work Star Trek script writers.

Thirty years back, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in Total Recall, Douglas Quaid, made use of an automated Johnny Cab to get him where he needed to go. And, just the other day, Tesla owner Elon Musk said full self-driving tech will be released by the end of this year (2020), with early feature-complete access being granted to a few elite customers. So, this evolution of self-driving cars to get us from A to B, and from home to work and vice versa (on repeat), has already come to fruition – although, apparently, many of the self-driving features still need to be fine-tuned, which insurance companies are picking up on and cautioning us about. Either way, the technology remains truly Space Age.
And then, we’ve encountered the touch screens of Minority Report and the video calls of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Perhaps, we haven’t yet gotten to the point of swiping through icons that are located up there in mid-air, aka Tom Cruise’s character in the former movie, John Anderton; and, perhaps, we haven’t yet sent manned spacecraft to planets like Jupiter… But Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubrick were still way ahead of their time when they predicted, in 1968, that parents would talk to their kids via video call when traveling for work – just as Dr Heywood Floyd does in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

AI has its limitations

The Disney Movie Smart House, made back in 1999, predicted that AI would clean, cook, set the lights, and even temperature exactly as the inhabitants demanded them. And many of these things, too, have come to pass with our smart devices controlling fridges, microwaves, garage doors, and alarms. Fortunately, though, the bots don’t (yet?) hold us hostage inside our houses… Nor do precocious teens, in this case the 13-year-old contest whiz, Benjamin Cooper (Ryan Merriman), take it upon themselves to provide a virtual “girlfriend” for their widowed father Nick (Kevin Kilner), in an attempt to break up his relationship with a real woman Sara Barnes (Jessica Steen).

Whatever your take on the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and the increasing automation of our daily lives, there is something to be said for the “human touch”. Guess who wins in Smart House out of the bot wife/virtual assistant, “Pat”, and the lovely, real, Sara?

Chicken or the egg

The question to ask is what came first? Was it that the sci-fi script writers of the past had sufficient scientific and technological knowhow to anticipate the way the world of AI and smart technology would develop? Or was it rather that they wrote “pie in the sky” stuff that we all thought was ultra-cool, and then companies and individuals with money, interest, and knowledge picked up on the trends and set about making them a reality? Probably a bit of both.

My thinking is that the sci-fi nerds, going forward, should act with extreme caution when they write their amazing and dynamic scripts because, before too long, someone (such as Patrick Priebe) will, for argument’s sake, create a laser watch – such as the one portrayed on-screen in the James Bond movie Never Say Never Again – and an innocent individual will unwittingly cut or burn something which they would really rather have left in tact.